Moving from the conventional to the virtual classroom

This paper describes the field experience of two prospective teachers of Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) in the teacher-training programme, regarding the differences in pedagogic skills between the face-to-face and the virtual world of Second Life. The student teachers recounted how they made pedagogical changes in relation to the extent of the consciousness raising, decision making and perception towards the different environments. A qualitative approach was primarily adopted to elicit this information from the data that consisted of post-teaching interviews and reflection reports. The preliminary results confirm that, to some extent, the prospective teachers' pedagogical knowledge was influenced by their previous experience (e.g., foreign language learning). The findings derived from a self-rating scale further reveal that the student teachers felt confident about their pedagogical knowledge and skills in the face-to-face context, e.g., conducting activities, but not confident in the virtual classroom, e.g., managing students' conduct. Both the student teachers opined that teaching in the virtual world was feasible to engender the involvement and interest of learners. The teachers' knowledge transferred from the conventional classroom to the virtual world has implications for teacher education.